Cape Town – Parliament will still pursue EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu when he returns to the national legislature to take up his seat.

This is after the committee failed to conclude the case against Shivambu before the end of the term ahead of the elections, for allegedly assaulting a journalist.

Former co-chairperson of the ethics committee Omie Singh said on Sunday the legacy report of the committee was clear to the new members.

He said they stated in the report that cases from the last Parliament would continue as long as those implicated were still MPs.

The case would only fall away when a charged person stopped being an MP because the committee had no jurisdiction outside Parliament.

Singh said the new members of the ethics committee would continue with cases of people who remained in Parliament. “They will take over from where we left off as long as a member is still a member,” he said of the MPs with charges from the last term.

The EFF increased its seats in the National Assembly after the elections from 25 MPs to 44 members.

The EFF is one of the parties that saw its support increase in the elections. When it contested the 2014 polls it only got 6% of the vote, but this increased to 10.79% last week.

The IFP, Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party also saw an increase in the seats they got in the National Assembly.

The ethics committee could not conclude the case of Shivambu before the term of the last Parliament expired. But the rules allow that the matter can be revived by new members of the committee.

Singh said it was clear from their legacy report to be tabled in Parliament soon on the cases that are outstanding, and what needed to be done.

The case of former State Security Minister Bongani Bongo was also not finalised at the end of the last term of Parliament. Bongo was accused by evidence leader of the Eskom inquiry in Parliament, advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara, of trying to bribe him.

Vanara has since left Parliament to join the SABC. But when he reported the matter, the portfolio committee on public enterprises was to hold an inquiry into the state capture project at Eskom.

The ethics committee is expected to hold its meeting after Parliament has been formally constituted and new MPs are sworn in next week.